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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

> Still lower than the U.S. I went to a couple of cities in Canada in the past year and there's construction everywhere, from skyscrapers to roads

NYC has had skyscrapers going up left and right the past decade: Central Park, 111 West 57, One Vanderbilt, 432 Park, 30 Hudson, 3 World Trade, 53W53, 35 Hudson, One57, 1 Manhattan, 220 Central Park South, 15 Hudson, 125 Greewich, 425 Park, etc.

All of those are taller or nearly as tall as the tallest buildings in all of Canada. In one US city. What does that prove?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_C...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_N...

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For more objective data, https://www.livabl.com/2019/03/torontos-condo-more-cranes-th... . Toronto does far outpace NYC in the current amount of high rise construction.

You name dropping one of the largest and most urbanized cities in the world proves what?

NYC doesn’t even make it in the top 10 biggest cities in the world. In fact NYC comes just behind Chengdu in 38th place. And in terms of density, NYC isn’t even in the top 50.

>And in terms of density, NYC isn’t even in the top 50.

I don't believe that. If you look at Manhattan alone, you'll see something very different. Unlike many other cities (particularly in the US, but also other places), NYC is basically a collection of cities. Manhattan is dense, but Staten Island is definitely not, so that drags down the average density. It's not fair to compare that with many other places.

So do you not believe that or is it not fair?

Any "top 50" list of cities by density is inherently biased: How do you demarcate where the city's borders lie? Do you count surrounding municipalities? The whole thing is going to be comparing apples and oranges, because different cities are organized differently. It just isn't something you can easily distill down into a list like that.

The comment he was responding to is anecdotal. They were responding anecdotally in kind.

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